Abstract
How does an increased presence of immigrants in the workplace affect anti-immigration voting behavior? While cooperative interactions between natives and immigrants can reduce intergroup prejudice, immigrant coworkers might be regarded as a threat to native-born workers’ labor market position. We combine detailed Swedish workplace data with precinct-level election outcomes for a large anti-immigration party (the Sweden Democrats) to study how the share of non-Europeans in the workplace affects opposition to immigration. We show that the share of non-Europeans in the workplace has a negative effect on support for the Sweden Democrats and that this effect is solely driven by same-skill contact in small workplaces. We interpret these results as supporting the so-called contact hypothesis: that increased interactions with minorities can reduce opposition to immigration among native-born voters, which, in turn, leads to lower support for anti-immigration parties.
Highlights
A majority of Western European countries have seen a large increase in the number of immigrants in recent decades
We examine the consequences of workplace contact between native-born and non-European workers in terms of support for anti-immigration parties
Having shown that the estimated negative effect of increased workplace diversity on support for anti-immigration parties is robust to various specifications and that these results are likely not driven by selection or unobservable trends, we explore whether the estimated effect can be attributed to workplace contact
Summary
A majority of Western European countries have seen a large increase in the number of immigrants in recent decades. This means that any potential positive effect of same-skill labor market competition on voting for anti-immigration parties is offset by the effect of meaningful workplace contact between coworkers.
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